


I Met Her at a Bar(room Brawl)

by weekend_conspiracy_theorist



Series: Flarrow Femslash Week 2015 [8]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/F, when you touch someone for the first time a color appears soulmates AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 03:03:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5441057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weekend_conspiracy_theorist/pseuds/weekend_conspiracy_theorist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shawna's at a seedy bar, hoping for a fight. Lisa's at a seedy bar, about to start a fight.</p><p>Getting punched in the face maybe isn't the best way to figure out you're soulmates.</p><p>(Written for Flarrow Femslash Week: Day Three.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Met Her at a Bar(room Brawl)

When you’re friends with someone, when you love someone, when you close your eyes and their face is the first one that comes to mind and vice versa—you leave a mark on them, and they leave a mark on you.

In Shawna Baez’s world, that’s more literal than it is in ours. The first time you touch someone, you know, by the color and intensity of the mark they leave behind, if and how you’re destined to love them. Her left palm is stained platonic blue from wrapping her hand around her sister’s finger as a baby, her right palm a mottled purple from years of shaking hands with new acquaintances—the scar on her stomach a pale red from where her six-year-old self lifted her shirt to show the scar to a girl she’d just met.

(She’s lucky that mark lies over a scar, hides in plain sight where she never had to explain to her father why she has a romantic connection to a girl.)

Shawna hasn’t lived a lonely life. She’s never had a romantic connection stain her skin a vivid red, the kind that people say means you’ve found your soulmate, but in her mind that’s hardly as important as the vivid blues left behind by friends she knows she could ask the world of and have them deliver.

She’s sitting in a bar, boots kicked up on the table in front of her—there’s mud caked on the bottom of them, the kind that’s flaking off everywhere, but this isn’t a classy place. The table’s surface is marred by scuff marks from glasses and knives and being flipped during bar fights, the floor sticky with spilled liquor and the air rank with the smell of booze and cigarette smoke and unwashed humans. Shawna’s not a fan of beer, especially not this kind that’s so cheap it tastes like literal piss, but- again- it’s extraordinarily cheap, and she’ll take what she can get.

She sips, though. Not worth chugging.

The bar is filled with ruffians of most of the normal sorts—the down-on-their-lucks and the murder-you-in-your-sleeps, the bought-out-a-motorcycle-shops and the spends-all-their-money-on-drugses. (There’s overlap between categories, of course. Shawna drifts between down-on-their-luck and murder-you-in-your-sleep, depending on how bad of a mood she’s in.) Everyone looks about themselves distrustfully, guards their seat viciously, and doesn’t take well to strangers wandering over in pursuit of small talk. The pool table in the corner is always in use, always being betted on, and always the source of accusations of cheating—essentially, the place is a powder keg, and Shawna’s not above admitting that she normally only comes here when she’s interested in a fight.

There’s a tall woman in the corner (murder-you-in-your-sleep with a little bit of bought-out-a-motorcycle-shop hanging off of her shoulders), sipping her whiskey with a sparkle of trouble in her eyes, and Shawna’s not at all surprised when she hustles a game of pool and becomes the catalyst for tonight’s bar-wide brawl.

Her opponent throws a punch—the woman dodges casually, and when he overbalances she grabs the collar of his jacket, giving him a yank that sends him headfirst into the wall. The man’s buddies charge to their feet—a few people jump in on the woman’s behalf, just to even out the numbers, and then the entire bar is in an uproar.

(The bartender heaves a sigh, knocks back the drink he’d been pouring for a woman who has now charged into the fray, and wanders into the back room.)

(Probably to call the police.)

Two men crash into Shawna’s table, their hands at each other’s throats, and Shawna lets her feet drop back to the floor as she drains the last swig of her beer. She cracks her neck, a man stumbles into her back, and then she’s brawling with the rest of them.

She maybe crashes a bottle over someone’s head, at some point. Maybe grabs someone by the hair and slams them into a table, takes a punch to the diaphragm, gets in a kick to some guy’s crotch… The fight is a blur, except for one specific moment—

“You’re cute,” the catalyst says, looking at Shawna with a grin that’s red with blood. “We should get drinks, sometime.”

“Don’t think so.” Shawna’s fist connects with the woman’s face, and she drops to the floor. (It sounds like she’s laughing.)

Shawna’s knuckles finally split, crimson spreading across them almost instantaneously.

The cops finally show up.

***

Lisa prods the skin just under her eye with one finger, humming under her breath, and Len sighs from the doorway to the bathroom. “I still can’t believe you started a bar fight. _Another_ bar fight, that is.”

Lisa glances back at him, amusement sparkling in her eyes. “Lenny, come on, we had this conversation last week, too. I didn’t start the fight; he was the one who took the first punch.” She sniffs, turns back to the mirror and her little grin slides back into a frown. Her black eye doesn’t seem to be fading, just changing colors from a mottled blue-purple-black to a greenish red. “This is ridiculous, Lenny. I’ve never had a bruise stick around this long before—and I have had some awful bruises.”

“Let me look at it.” Len enters the room, takes Lisa by the chin to tilt her head just so. He’s staring at the eye rather intently for a very long time, a strange look on his face, until Lisa finally huffs, knocks his hand away.

“Well?” she demands. “Is it being cured by the power of your gaze, or do I need to ice it again?”

“Only you,” Len tells her, and that strange look on his face is morphing into exasperated amusement. “Only you would manage to find your soulmate by being punched in the face.”

Lisa turns back to the mirror, her jaw dropping. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” she growls, leaning forward to peer at the bright, shining red underneath the fading bruise.

***

Shawna drops into the chair next to the woman with the bright red fist mark along her cheekbone. The floor is still sticky, the air still tepid with smoke and body odor, and Shawna’s still in the mood for a fight. (This time, though, she thinks she might have someone at her back.)

“Shawna Baez,” she says, kicking her feet up onto the table and offering the woman a handshake.

The woman flips over the extended hand, smirking at the bright red stain across its knuckles. “Lisa Snart,” she says, altering her grip so that they’re holding hands under the table as the waitress (bored, blowing bubble gum) comes to ask for their order. “I hope you don’t mind if I start covering this thing with make-up from now on.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm taking prompts for all of Flarrow Femslash Week! Hit me up at either lisasneeze, my flash sideblog, or my main blog, weekend-conspiracy-theorist


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